by Eric Brown
It’s time to let bygones be bygones. Water under the bridge, right? What happened was a hell of a long time ago. I’m prepared to apologize, and I don’t do that too often.
What do you say?
Come down this weekend. Open house. We can talk.
Yours, Denbigh Connaught.
She looked up from the letter. ‘What did happen, Charles?’
She was shocked to see that he was weeping. He fumbled with a kerchief and dabbed at his eyes. ‘As he said, a long time ago. A very long time ago. But …’ He reached out and grasped her hand. ‘But it brings back so many memories, so many terrible memories.’ He sniffed. ‘The thing is, I know I should go down to Cornwall, and accept his apology – if he really means it, and it isn’t part of some nasty ploy of his to hurt me even more – and, as he says, let bygones be bygones. But’ – he smiled at her – ‘but I do not know, Maria, if I am strong enough to do so.’
She raised his plump hand and kissed his knuckles. ‘If it will make it any easier, I’ll come with you.’
He brightened. ‘Would you, my child? Would you really? That would be …’ He trailed off.
‘Charles?’
‘I wonder … Would it be terrible of me to ask that Donald come, too? He’s such a reassuring presence to have on hand in times of need.’
She smiled. ‘I’m sure he’d be delighted.’
‘Capital! I feel a little better already.’
Maria smiled. ‘That’s the ticket.’
He murmured, ‘He hurt me grievously, Maria. What Denbigh Connaught did, back then … I swore that I would have nothing more to do with him. But … but perhaps what I am about to do is necessary: I will no longer be running away.’
She patted his hand. ‘I think it would be a wise move.’ She stood, a sudden thought occurring to her. ‘Charles, would you like to lunch with Molly and me? We’re popping around the corner.’
‘To the Lyons’?’ The fleshy acreage of his face arranged itself in lineaments of horror at the very notion of being seen anywhere as infra dig as a Lyons’ tearoom. ‘I couldn’t possibly, Maria – their tea is positively vile. But I have a better idea. I will take you and Molly for lunch at the Beeches, as a token of gratitude for your kindness.’
‘The Beeches? Are you absolutely sure?’
‘I insist, my child.’
‘Then I’d be delighted, and I’m sure Molly would be, too. I was going to tell her all about gay Paree.’
Charles struggled to his feet. ‘Then to the Beeches it is!’
Smiling at his rejuvenated spirits, she followed him from the room.
It was almost four, and Maria was thinking of packing up and calling it a day, when a knock sounded on the door.
‘Come in!’ she called, and Donald poked his head into the office. ‘Surprise,’ he said.
She hurried to greet him with a kiss.
‘I thought,’ he said, ‘I’d take you home and cook something while you put your feet up with a glass of wine and tell me all about your busy day.’
She laughed. ‘You? Cook? And what do you suggest you cook, Donald – cheese on toast?’
‘Garnished with the finest grilled tomatoes.’
‘No, I will do the cooking tonight. Ratatouille?’
‘That’ll be wonderful,’ he said. ‘Oh, I don’t suppose the Hollywood bods have stumped up the dosh yet?’
A week before their wedding, Donald had agreed a deal with an agent in Los Angeles for the option on one of his Sam Brooke thrillers. He’d told Maria that the cash they were offering – two thousand pounds – was almost obscene: five times what he’d normally be paid for a single novel. She’d replied that he could always make a donation to charity – once, that is, he’d bought her a cottage in the country.
‘These things take time, Donald,’ she said. ‘Now, tell me all about your day following Mr Royce.’
He sat on the corner of the desk and gave her a brief résumé of Wilson Royce’s exploits. ‘And considering his connection with the fence in Rotherhithe,’ he finished, ‘I think he’s up to something. No smoke without fire, as they say.’
Maria regarded him, tapping her teeth with a fingernail. ‘Donald, how would you like to go down to Cornwall and stay at Connaught House this weekend?’
‘Oh – so Charles has decided to take on Denbigh Connaught?’
She rocked her head. ‘He’s undecided. There’s something very much troubling him, but he won’t tell me what it is.’ She paused. ‘I think he’d like your opinion of Denbigh Connaught. And he would feel safer with you around.’
‘Safer?’
‘I think that, for some reason, Connaught frightens him.’
‘Well, Wilson Royce did describe him as an egotistical monster. I’m intrigued to see if the ogre is as black as he’s painted. Very well, let’s go.’
‘You don’t mind?’ she said. ‘You did say you wanted a quiet weekend.’
‘I’ll be with you, so I don’t mind what I do. And, you never know, it might prove interesting. I might find out a little more about our friend Royce.’
‘But what if he turns up, Donald, and recognizes you?’
‘Then I’ll pass it off as a big coincidence,’ he said. ‘Ralph can look into Royce’s dealings in London while we’re away. Oh, I’d better pop into the office first thing in the morning. I have a bar of soap for him.’
She laughed. ‘A bar of soap?’
‘How about I explain over a quick drink?’
‘That would be wonderful, mon cheri.’
FIVE
On Friday morning Ralph Ryland unwrapped the bar of soap from its nest of tissue paper. Donald had done a good job. The impression of the key was deep and sharp. He took his last two Woodbines from their packet, wedged one behind his right ear and lit the second, then slipped the soap into the empty packet for protection. It was only a short drive to Harry the key-cutter up in Brixton, but he didn’t want the soap to get battered on the way.
He sat back in his chair, lodged his winklepickers on the desk and enjoyed his smoke.
It was good to have Don working with him again. They made a good team. Ryland had been at this lark for more than ten years and he knew the underworld and all its quirks like the back of his hand. Don had a cunning brain when it came to psychology and motivation, experience he’d gained from churning out all those books about criminals.
They were like chalk and cheese, really, him and Don. He liked a night at the dogs while Don preferred the theatre and good restaurants, even more so since he’d hitched himself to Maria – a high-class girl if ever there was one. Don read novels, while all Ryland read these days was racing form. And just the other day Don told him that he was beginning to appreciate classical music, while Ryland’s idea of a good sing-song was a night round the piano at the Grapes.
But for all their differences, they were as close as brothers, and all because of what had happened on Madagascar back in 1942.
The phone shrilled on the desk, and reluctantly Ryland tipped his chair forward and picked up the receiver.
It was the landlord, whingeing about the non-payment of last month’s rent. ‘Like I told you, mate,’ Ryland said past his fag end, ‘you’ll get the dosh when you’ve fixed the ruddy window. Like Niagara Falls in here every time it rains.’
He slammed the phone down and stared around at the down-at-heel office. When a client came here for the first time, Ryland saw the place through their eyes, and he didn’t like what he saw: cracked linoleum the colour of excrement, walls daubed a shade of mouldy green, and rotting window frames. And the smell from the chippy down below! To make matters worse, the landlord had recently upped the rent to twenty guineas a month. Daylight robbery, it was. He’d have a word with Don, go through their takings and see if they could afford somewhere a bit more upmarket. He’d like to see the look on their landlord’s mug when he told him they were flitting.
He checked his address book for Bernard Radley’s details, then picked up the fag pack
et from the desk and left the office.
He turned up the collar of his jacket against the chilly wind and crossed the pavement to his Morris Minor. Like the office, it had seen better days. The engine was sound enough, but the bodywork was rusted through in places. He reckoned he’d get another year out of the old girl before she clapped out completely. And then more bleeding expenses.
The rain started as he drove to Brixton. He found himself behind a slow double-decker and lit his last cigarette.
He still had nightmares about Madagascar. He’d wake in the early hours, shouting and sweating, until he realized he was at home in Lewisham and Annie had her arms around him, reassuring him that he was safe. What was really frightening, he thought, was not so much what had happened – though that had been bad enough – but what might have happened if Don hadn’t saved him. In the advance on the port town of Diego Suarez, he’d got himself pinned down in a ditch just below a Vichy machine-gun post. To make matters worse, his Enfield had jammed just as a French goon appeared at the top of the hill, about to throw a hand grenade.
What happened next would live in Ryland’s memory until his dying day.
He’d heard the rattle of machine-gun fire in the ditch behind him, and the soldier fell backwards, ripped to shreds. Then he’d felt someone gripping him, dragging him along the ditch and into cover. He’d stared at the soldier’s sweat-soaked face in the moonlight, saw the fear in his eyes – and the fact that both men had seen and understood the other’s fear had in some strange way cemented what would become a long-lasting friendship. Donald had been mentioned in despatches for his bravery. As far as Ryland was concerned, he deserved a ruddy VC.
The bus turned right at the traffic lights, and Ryland continued straight on to Brixton High Street.
Donald didn’t like to talk about that night – and hated it when Ryland brought it up in conversation – and Ryland knew that Don still had nightmares about killing the man. ‘I know it’s irrational, Ralph. It was him or us, and I know I did the right thing. But even so, I can’t forget the fact that I killed someone … And it’s even worse because I saw the look on his face before he died.’
When they were demobbed, Don had gone through a tough year finding a publisher, and Ryland suggested he work part-time at the agency. To his delight, Don had agreed, and they’d worked well together for a couple of years before the novel commissions came in and Don returned to full-time authorship. More recently, with marriage on the cards and a move to an expensive apartment in Kensington in the offing, Ryland had suggested Don rejoin the agency and put in a two-day shift.
It was like the good old days all over again.
He parked on the High Street and made his way to Harry’s cramped premises squeezed in between the Lyons’ tearoom and Woolworth’s.
Harry Beckett was a huge bald-headed geezer who wore a stained apron and a printer’s eye-shade. Like his shop, he exuded the pungent odour of metal shavings and lathe lubricant.
Ryland pushed the cigarette packet across the counter. Harry grunted a laugh. ‘You know I only smoke roll-ups, Ralph.’
‘Little present.’
Harry opened the packet and tipped out the soap. ‘You trying to tell me I need a wash?’ He examined the impression. ‘Chubb. Latch key. Pre-war. Don’t keep ’em in stock – I’ll have to send out for a blank. Won’t be ready today. Maybe tomorrow, but I’m going to the match, so I don’t know. Look, I’ll certainly have it done Monday morning, OK? I’ll give you a bell when it’s ready. And I’ll only charge you two and six.’
‘You’re a scholar and a gent, Harry, and there’s not many of us left.’
‘You off to the match?’
It was the first game of the season tomorrow, and Millwall were at home to Walsall. ‘You bet. Taking the boys.’
They chatted for five minutes about Millwall’s prospects after their lowly finish the previous season, and then Ryland thanked Harry and made his way back to the car.
He drove north-east to Rotherhithe and turned off the main road into the warren of slums that clung to the bank of the Thames. The Luftwaffe had done its best to demolish the area, and even now, years later, rows of back-to-back terraces were interrupted by gaping holes, piles of red bricks and shattered timber.
Bernard Radley ran his rag-and-bone business from the cobbled yard of an old brewery – a convenient front for his real money-maker: the receiving and selling of stolen goods. His idiot son ran the rag-and-bone side of things, while Bernard – an embittered, raddled old alcoholic – led the local constabulary a merry dance with his wheeling and dealing.
Ryland ducked through a tiny door in the huge wooden gate and found himself in a cut-price Aladdin’s cave full of every conceivable kind of junk known to humanity: piles of brass bedsteads and bathtubs, kitchen sinks and cast-iron radiators, a tottering pile of car doors and windscreens. There might have been order in the chaos, but Ryland was beggared if he could see it.
‘Wot you want, mister?’
Across the yard Radley’s son Len, a lanky youth with a slack expression, was grooming a huge Shire horse, its muscled splendour and shining coat out of place in the insalubrious environment of the junk yard.
Len stared at Ryland with a blank, gormless expression. ‘I said, wot you want, mister?’
‘Bernie about?’
‘You a rozzer?’
‘Yeah, the ruddy Chief Constable,’ Ryland said, crossing the yard to the green-painted lean-to that Radley used as an office when he wasn’t out and about on nefarious errands in his Morris Commercial.
A stooped, grey-haired old man opened the door and gave Ryland a quick once-over. ‘Oh, it’s you.’
‘Come to pay me respects,’ Ryland said, following Radley into the office.
A gas fire belted out a furnace heat and a classical record revolved on the turntable of a huge, pre-war radiogram. The music finished and Radley lifted the needle off the spinning disc.
He sat behind a desk piled with ledgers and poured a shot of whisky into a chipped mug celebrating Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation. That, like the opera, was another oddity: Bernie Radley was a staunch monarchist.
‘You won’t be drinking on duty?’ Radley said.
‘What makes you think I’m working, Bernie?’
‘You ever come here when you’re not?’
Radley was as grey as a corpse that had been dug up a day after burial and brought back to a semblance of shuffling life. His first wife had died of lung cancer in the thirties, and his second had been killed in an air raid back in 1941. His only son was retarded and, perhaps not surprisingly, Bernard sought solace in drink. Ryland pitied the old man, but never left the junk yard without feeling that he was escaping.
‘So what is it you’re wanting?’ Radley asked.
Ryland remained standing and leaned back against a filing cabinet. ‘You heard of a young fellow called Wilson Royce?’
Although Radley turned his head in Ryland’s direction, he couldn’t bring himself to establish eye contact. His defeated grey eyes gazed at something over his visitor’s right shoulder. ‘Should I have?’
‘Your name was in his address book.’
From his breast pocket Ryland took the photograph that Don had given him that morning. ‘Young chap on the right.’
Radley glanced at the picture and passed it back. ‘What’s it to you?’
‘I’m looking into his activities.’
‘What’s he been doing?’
‘That’s what I’m trying to find out.’
Radley took a drink of whisky. His gaze switched to something on Ryland’s left. ‘Came here a while back. Odd fellah, well spoken. Bit of a toff. I asked him if he’d met Her Majesty.’
‘And had he?’
‘Funny you should ask. Said he’d just been to a garden party at the Palace. He were introduced to Her Majesty, he said. So I shook his hand. Fancy that, eh? I shook a hand that’d shook the hand of Her Majesty.’ He raised his right hand, as white as a fillet of
Dover sole, and stared at it incredulously.
‘Can you credit it?’ Ryland said. ‘So when was it you saw this Wilson Royce?’
Radley sniffed. ‘About a year back. He had a painting. I told him I don’t deal in art. Put him on to this bloke up Belsize Park way.’
‘What was his name, this Belsize Park chap?’
Radley leaned back in his chair. ‘What’s it worth?’
‘Five bob,’ Ryland said.
‘A quid?’
‘Ten bob, then.’
‘Right-o, ten bob.’ He reached for a ledger, leafed through the dog-eared pages, then looked up.
Ryland took a ten-shilling note from his wallet and held it ready. ‘Go on.’
‘Geezer by the name of William Harker.’
‘Address?’
‘The note,’ Radley said, ‘in my palm.’
Sighing, Ryland passed the money to the old man.
Radley examined the note, folded it into quarters, and slipped it into his shirt pocket. ‘William Harker, he owns a place called Harker Fine Arts on Beverly Road.’
‘This Harker a friend of yours?’
‘Wouldn’t call him that.’
Ryland pushed himself away from the filing cabinet and saluted. ‘It’s been a pleasure doing business with you, Bernie. Cheerio.’
‘Pleasure’s all mine,’ Radley said, replacing the needle at the start of the record and pouring himself another whisky.
Ryland stepped from the claustrophobic warmth of the lean-to and crossed the cobbled yard.
‘Wot you want, mister?’ Len called out as Ryland ducked through the door and escaped into the street. ‘You a rozzer?’
He decided to call it a day. He didn’t feel like tooling all the way up to Belsize Park. If he knocked off now, he could have a couple of pints and a pork pie at the Grapes and surprise Annie by coming home early. He’d spend a nice, quiet afternoon studying form for the races at Haydock tomorrow.
He’d pay his respects to William Harker in the morning.